Giant kraken lair discovered

October 10, 2011

"Specimen U" illustrates a fossil bed showing shonisaur vertebral disks arranged in curious linear patterns with almost geometric regularity. The arranged vertebrae resemble the pattern of sucker discs on a cephalopod tentacle, with each vertebra strongly resembling a coleoid sucker. Used with permission of Mark McMenamin.

Long before whales, the oceans of Earth were roamed by a very different kind of air-breathing leviathan. Snaggle-toothed ichthyosaurs larger than school buses swam at the top of the Triassic Period ocean food chain, or so it seemed before Mount Holyoke College paleontologist Mark McMenamin took a look at some of their remains in Nevada. Now he thinks there was an even larger and more cunning sea monster that preyed on ichthyosaurs: a kraken of such mythological proportions it would have sent Captain Nemo running for dry land. McMenamin will be presenting the results of his work on Monday, 10 October at the Annual Meeting of The Geological Society of America in Minneapolis.

The evidence is at Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park in Nevada, where McMenamin and his daughter spent a few days this summer. It's a site where the remains of nine 45-foot (14-meter) ichthyosaurs, of the species Shonisaurus popularis can be found. These were the Triassic's counterpart to today's predatory giant squid-eating sperm whales. But the fossils at the Nevada site have a long history of perplexing researchers, including the world's expert on the site: the late Charles Lewis Camp of U.C. Berkeley.

"Charles Camp puzzled over these fossils in the 1950s," said McMenamin. "In his papers he keeps referring to how peculiar this site is. We agree, it is peculiar."

Camp's interpretation was that the fossils probably represented death by an accidental stranding or from a toxic plankton bloom. But no one had ever been able to prove that the beasts died in shallow water. In fact more recent work on the rocks around the fossils suggest it was a deep water environment, which makes neatly arranged carcasses even more mysterious.

This question -- shallow or deep ocean death -- is what attracted McMenamin to the site.

"I was aware that anytime there is controversy about depth, there is probably something interesting going on," McMenamin said. And when they arrived at the remote state park and started looking at the fossils, McMenamin was struck by their strangeness.

"It became very clear that something very odd was going on there," said McMenamin. "It was a very odd configuration of bones."

First of all, the different degrees of etching on the bones suggested that the shonisaurs were not all killed and buried at the same time. It also looked like the bones had been purposefully rearranged. That it got him thinking about a particular modern predator that is known for just this sort of intelligent manipulation of bones.

"Modern octopus will do this," McMenamin said. What if there was an ancient, very large sort of octopus, like the kraken of mythology. "I think that these things were captured by the kraken and taken to the midden and the cephalopod would take them apart."

In the fossil bed, some of the shonisaur vertebral disks are arranged in curious linear patterns with almost geometric regularity, McMenamin explained.The proposed Triassic kraken, which could have been the most intelligent invertebrate ever, arranged the vertebral discs in double line patterns, with individual pieces nesting in a fitted fashion as if they were part of a puzzle.

Even more creepy: The arranged vertebrae resemble the pattern of sucker discs on a cephalopod tentacle, with each vertebra strongly resembling a coleoid sucker. In other words, the vertebral disc "pavement" seen at the state park may represent the earliest known self portrait.

But could an octopus really have taken out such huge swimming predatory reptiles? No one would have believed such a tale until the staff of the Seattle Aquarium set up a video camera at night a few years ago to find out what was killing the sharks in one of their large tanks. What they were shocked to discover was that a large octopus they had in the same tank was the culprit. The video of one of these attacks is available on the web to anyone who uses the search terms "shark vs octopus."

"We think that this cephalopod in the Triassic was doing the same thing," said McMenamin. Among the evidences of the kraken attacks are many more ribs broken in the shonisaur fossils than would seem accidental and the twisted necks of the ichthyosaurs. "It was either drowning them or breaking their necks."

Of course, it's the perfect Triassic crime because octopuses are mostly soft-bodied and don't fossilize well. Only their beaks, or mouth parts, are hard and the chances of those being preserved nearby are very low. That means the evidence for the murderous Kraken is circumstantial, which may leave some scientists rather skeptical. But McMenamin is not worried.

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66 comments

Interesting read. Wonder what would have happened if the mass extinction event that killed all those creatures never occurred. I wonder if intelligence would have developed sooner. Sounds like there were some epic giant creatures all over Earth and now we're stuck with medium to small sized mammals and fish. Why such a drastic reduction in size?

I've often wondered that myself. Everything was bigger back then. Now we have rather dull ecosystems that lack the giant creatures of the past. It makes you wonder.. If they had survived the mass extinctions would we still be the top predator today?

Interesting read. Wonder what would have happened if the mass extinction event that killed all those creatures never occurred.

Cephalopod's are flexible organisms. I doubt that they were as affected by a mass extinction, especially concidering rumors of giant octopi corpses consistently washing up on shores. If a decrease in population occured at all, its probably because of the decrease in available food supply as other large ocean game over the last few million years has been gradually dying out.

But supposedly some giant squids and octopi still exist today. When man first started exploring the seas there were numerous rumous of ships being attacked by giant tentacled creatures. We know regular sized cephalopods are already among the smarter organisms in the sea.

If these giants are nearly as intelligent, maybe they're just avoiding us. Size is usually proportionate to life span. If they exist and the rumors are true, they probably still remember us.

Large is not efficient, much like cellphones progress is from larger to smaller, to a point, no one wants to accidentally ingest their cell phone while they are using it.

Large animals are slow, they are unable to hide from predators, and they require large amounts of food and water. Natural selection will not favor large animals in the presence of smaller, faster, more stealthy predators, or in an environment of scarcity. The largest animals that exist today depend on herd protection from predators and must constantly travel to reach new food sources.

Kevintrs, as much of a retard as he is, was on the right track. After the mass extinction event vegetation was likely severely reduced due to the dust and ash that was thrown into the atmosphere that blocked a large percentage of the sunlight from reaching the planets surface for many years. In this absence of plant matter to feed on large animals requiring large amounts of food would not have survived.

After the mass extinction event vegetation was likely severely reduced due to the dust and ash that was thrown into the atmosphere that blocked a large percentage of the sunlight from reaching the planets surface for many years.

Or in the case of a global flood, you've wiped out plant life, and created a mini ice age. So large amount of food sources would take time to come back.

Water quality in the least of fresh vs. salty has been disturbed as well. Quite possible that larger sea creatures weren't able to handle the water quality shift. Many sea creatures were though, as we seen plenty that live on the fresh/salty boundaries.

Also, interesting, is that the post flood genealogy decreases in age via exponential decay, not linear. Quite possible that other factors from O2/CO2 levels to new radioactivity played a role in life expectancy and body size.

a kraken of such mythological proportions it would have sent Captain Nemo running for dry land

I refuse to believe that "all" sea monster stories were myths.

Exaggeration, well ok...

But we know 45ft fish existed. We know of the megalodons and modern sharks, and we know a 100ft blue whales are real, and 375ft trees are real. We know there are 40ft crocodile fossils, as large as the Lake Placid movie's monster alligator...

Why not a 100ft octopus? Is there any reason it could not have existed?

Do you think the sailors were out of their minds and just made up such stories?

If a modern Kraken still exists, it probably would not attack ships, because the ships are too big and made of steel and have diesel engines that make a lot of noise.

It's also true that it would likely not grow as big due to food supply shortages: fisherman remove everything by the millions now, consuming entire schools and ecosystems worth of organisms in one catch...

I mean, anybody who's ever watched a few episodes of "river monsters" would know that things in the water are bigger and stranger than people really stop to think about.

A catfish that is big enough to kill a cow.Electric Eels actually CAN kill humans via shock.An introduced Pacu turns omnivore and destroys an ecosystem, and bites off human testicals, earning the nick name "ball cutter".

There's nasty, nasty creatures in the water, and many of the legends turn out to be factual, and not even exaggerated in some cases...

Could it be that, like coelecanth, some of these "mythical" mega-creatures actually did survive up untill modern times, or at least a few hundred years ago?

This is an extraordinary claim to make without fossil evidence left by the animal, and with no obvious transitional ancestors. I wouldn't be surprised if this gets heated review and other scientists propose an alternative explanation for how these patterns could've occurred naturally.

@plasticpower The drastic reduction in size is mainly due to lower oxygen levels and a much cooler earth. Back then the earth was much warmer allowing reptiles to reach massive size and still keep a warm body temperature. The increased oxygen levels meant that less breathing was needed to support such a massive body.

Also, warm blooded animals consume way too much food to keep their temperature constant, making animals of that size almost impossible due to the amount of food needed to maintain that size. Those size animals were usually cold blooded which was a great adaptation because it allowed them to skip eating for weeks or months at a time like modern snakes do.

It's not unlikely it is impossible. For there to have been a global flood you would have to explain where all the extra water suddenly came from, where it all suddenly went afterwards, and why there is ZERO evidence of such an event in the rock strata when it would be blatant if it had actually occurred.

that site is garbage. it proves nothing except your insanity and inability to deal with reality. I could pick it apart piece by piece but lets be honest, your not interested in truth, just your sky fairy.

First of all, contrary to what some would say, the Earth most certainly HAS been flooded completely at least one time in the past.

Even the Old Earth standard geology model says that, it's just most people on this website don't know enough about geology to know this.

Even the atheists claim to believe the world was once covered by a single ocean BEFORE any known continents existed. However, the closest Biblical analog to this would be Genesis 1,2. Not the Noah flood event.

WE know from archeology that the Mediterrainean and Black Seas have many sunken cities, relatively deep inside their existing basins today, but even this flood was only a regional flood.

But there actually is enough water on the Earth to flood the whole earth: As ice.

Ice sticks to surfaces, so you could "flood" the earth to a depth of about 7 meters, if you consider all of the water on the Earth as ice sticking to the surface (as opposed to being liquid at 35,000 feet above sea level.)

However, the reality is the "Snowball Earth" actually does have evidence in the standard model geologic record, once again, contrary to my detractors.

Unfortunately, this event is believed to have been 650 million years ago, which is clearly entirely too long to be a candidate for the Biblical Noachian flood.

Now it's possible water could be subducted and dissolved back into wet rock in the mantle, but the water was supposedly on the earth for about 150 days after the 40 days of raining. That's not enough time for magma to reasonably dissolve the water back into itself.

Finally, most Basalts could not have been formed a few thousand years BC, because we have magnetic banding to show they are many times older than that would allow. Though that's not a condition for the Great Flood to have occured, the site's theories are just baseless, poorly conceived, and poorly presented.

The question of where did so much water come from? Well, I've presented a very consistent, naturalistic explaination, which is that a very, very large, water-rich comet could have broken up slowly in high orbit, and it's remnants would have fallen to the earth as, what else, "rain".

Now adding that much mass to the earth would have gravitationally perturbed plate boundaries and things, thus opening up the "fountains of the deep".

In any case, there are problems, because the Biblical time line cannot be correct regarding the flood, even if the other details somehow are correct. There is un-broken written history of Sumeria and Egypt from before the time the Bible claims the flood happened, not to mention many monuments from before the flood is said to have happened.

I didn't do the math exactly, but the flood in the Bible is supposedly around 2400b.c.

Jericho pre-dates this, and is somewhere between 7,000 and 13,000 years old.

that site is garbage. it proves nothing except your insanity and inability to deal with reality. I could pick it apart piece by piece but lets be honest, your not interested in truth, just your sky fairy.

oddly it feels like i went over the top there, even though your ideas are terrible i havent seen you spam the site with it hardcore or be rude(yet) so i shouldnt of been so rude i guess.

Had a Biblical flood happened around 2400b.c. as the literal biblical TIME LINE claims, the ancient levels of Jericho would not even exist. All of that would have gotten ground to powder and washed away, even in my glaciation theory could not explain how the city could survive that.

The story of Noah's flood is probably based on the Mediterrainean and Black Sea flooding, and was just religiousized and exaggerated over the years.

I used to be like you, trying to defend everything in the Bible, but you just can't.

You know what, the word of an Allmighty God should not need defending, if it really is inspired and infallible, because it would be true beyond contestation.

If the bible was inspired and infallible, I should not have to explain it to someone else, or defend it to myself or someone else, because the TRUTH should speak for itself and prove itself.

What difference does it make anyway? If God is eternal, does it matter when things were made? I don't know.

Do you figure Samson "literally" killed 1000 armed Philistine men with only his bare hands and a donkey's jaw bone?

Let's assume God made him invincible, I mean like Superman invincible, and made the jawbone unbreakable.

Now if every blow Samson landed was a one hit kill, and it took him an average of a few seconds per attack, the fight would last maybe an hour non-stop. I guess they either never hit him, or else their swords just bounced off his invincible hide or something.

Now in the text, Samson commands the 3000 Jews who were present to not attack him. Apparently, we are to believe that if the 3000 Jews had attacked him, they would have all been killed too.

Do you really belive this happened?

The vast majority of mainstream Christians are taught to believe this literally happened.

Now why, if God did this then, why doesn't God do ANYTHING of a similar magnitude now, not even to save someone's life or soul?

Since it's almost certain that the story of Samson is not literally true, and since it wouldn't make sense at all as a figurative story, we are left with the conclusion that it is heavily exaggerated, perhaps based on one strong guy, maybe as strong as a modern strong man or something, and they just exaggerated it over time.

Or, it could just be a fairy tale, like X-men or Superman, and have no basis in reality.

What's it doing in a book that everyone claims to be inspired and infallible? I got no clue really.

Unfortunately, other books in the Bible cite the story of Samson as being a literal fact.

If that is the case, again, why nothing like that today?

Why doesn't God pump one person full of such energy, and have him bench press a bulldozer or something, and that will prove that Samson is based on truth.

Average human size is like 5'10" or so, but we know of exception humans with different genetic forms of gigantism being up to nearly 9ft tall, i.e. Rober Wadlo, being apparently more than 3ft taller than average.

Now all it would take is for your big octopus to be the offspring of two other octopus that each have a different genetic form of gigantism, and viola, a giant-giant octopus.

Not much genetic difference between Robert Wadlo and a normal human, yet he was 50% taller than normal.

Look how much bigger different cat species are, and it's only a few genes that make it happen: tiger vs house cat, one is like 50 to 80 times bigger than the other.

Thanks for answering my question. Lack of oxygen and food supply makes sense. I do recall reading that there was A LOT more oxygen back then and we're only breathing a little over half of what it used to be. I guess small creatures really are less prone to ecosystem collapses like that.

Sounds like there were some epic giant creatures all over Earth and now we're stuck with medium to small sized mammals and fish

We still have with us the largest animal that ever lived - blue whales. Whale sharks are also impressively sized. Elephants and giraffes aren't so small.

Why such a drastic reduction in size?

Don't forget that until relatively recently, several tens of thousands of years, many places in the world had plentiful mega-fauna. They became extinct very recently in geologic terms, likely due to human predation/habitat transformation and climate change.

Weird no one posted a link to a VIDEO of a giant squid in the water. There HAVE been giant squids found dead BUT this thing is something else. REALLY impressive and it could even be the descendent of the hypothetical kraken in the article

REALLY IMPRESSIVE. To bad there isn't more. The article makes this claim

Based on analysis of videos not unlike the one captured at the Perdido site, scientists know that the adult Magnapinna observed to date range from 5 to 23 feet (1.5 to 7 meters) long, Vecchione said. By contrast, the largest known giant squid measured about 16 meters (52 feet) long

Considering just how long the tentacles are in the video that have the body less than foot which does not seem to fit the video

Sounds like there were some epic giant creatures all over Earth and now we're stuck with medium to small sized mammals and fish. Why such a drastic reduction in size?

Actually the largest known animal that ever existed exists now, Blue Whale. You have to remember these fossil records are over millions and millions of years, they didn't always all exist together at the same time.

Quite possibly the lack of food resources to feed the giants after the global flood.

Global flood? like in the bible? An event extremely unlikely to ever have happened??

Couldn't global warming cause all of the world's ice to melt, raising the water levels, giving the illusions of a flood? We've had tons of ice ages, how would the world have looked whilst all of that ice was melting?

From wiki "The last glacial period was the most recent glacial period within the current ice age occurring during the last years of the Pleistocene, from approximately 110,000 to 10,000 years ago."

We've also discovered very old bones, could our ancestors during that time period have noted this down, somehow ending up in a book? I don't doubt the possibility.

This article should be classified under "Science Fiction" rather than Science. There is zero fossil evidence that the giant Kraken ever existed, much less that it could kill Itchthyosaurs and then arrange their vertebrae in intelligent patterns. The suggestion that the pattern might be a "self-portrait" of the alleged Kraken is hilarious, but it's not science.

Finally, most Basalts could not have been formed a few thousand years BC, because we have magnetic banding to show they are many times older than that would allow. Though that's not a condition for the Great Flood to have occured, the site's theories are just baseless, poorly conceived, and poorly presented

Poorly read it seems by you. Had you have read it, or even bothered to search, you could have found the discussion on bands, magnetic reversals and intensities.

There have been several studies by Coe, Prevost, and Lewin on much more rapid magnetic change as well.

The question of where did so much water come from?

We already see other examples of a subterranean water layer being tidal pumped. Enceladus is an example. So it is not out of the question, that the earth has had one as well in the past. Which is why we are starting to find pockets of salty water deep in the Earth's crust.

This article should be classified under "Science Fiction" rather than Science. There is zero fossil evidence that the giant Kraken ever existed, much less that it could kill Itchthyosaurs and then arrange their vertebrae in intelligent patterns.

Nor will there ever be, they would have very few parts that would fossilize.

The evidence provided is the large number of broken ribs and necks, which is evident from the fossilized remains of the icthyasaurs. The theory is that a large predator caused this unexpected occurrence of broken bones, can you come up with a better one?

The suggestion that the pattern might be a "self-portrait" of the alleged Kraken is hilarious, but it's not science.

That is a bit far fetched I agree, but cephalopods have been known to arrange rocks and bones into seemingly specific patterns.

Couldn't global warming cause all of the world's ice to melt, raising the water levels, giving the illusions of a flood? We've had tons of ice ages, how would the world have looked whilst all of that ice was melting?

From wiki "The last glacial period was the most recent glacial period within the current ice age occurring during the last years of the Pleistocene, from approximately 110,000 to 10,000 years ago."

We've also discovered very old bones, could our ancestors during that time period have noted this down, somehow ending up in a book? I don't doubt the possibility.

Correct me if I'm wrong :)

You are underestimating the amount of water required to flood the entire world.

When water freezes it expands by about 9%, so yes glacial ice could cover a bit more than liquid water because it is less dense, but as it melts it is once again liquid water, it doesn't keep that same expanded volume/reduced density it had as ice.

Had you have read it, or even bothered to search, you could have found the discussion on bands, magnetic reversals and intensities.

So how about you post a link. I really am not going to try to guess at what YOU think is evidence. I have a LOT of nonsense masquerading as evidence. I want to know what YOU think is evidence.

There have been several studies by Coe, Prevost, and Lewin on much more rapid magnetic change as well.

Studies or unsupported claims like the Hydroplate bullshit which is hilarious. Magic race track continents that accelerate and decelerate at Dr. Browns need. Mountain building from collisions that magically don't release any heat. Water from ten miles down that is magically not boiling hot as the rock that far down is today. The idiocy goes on and on. All of it bad. All of produced by the magical passes of Dr. Browns hands that carefully avoid a any numbers at all. Exactly what no competent engineer would do.>>

We already see other examples of a subterranean water layer being tidal pumped.

In Brown's idiocy it is a LOT of water. Try reading it. I did. It would take a MILES DEEP reservoir to cover the entire Earth miles deep. Yes miles as the highest mountain is seven miles high and there is no way to make grow that much without invoking magic.

Enceladus is an example.

Has ICE not heavy rock on top of a hypothetical ocean. Brown has ROCK over water supported by his mighty hand waving. Sure isn't supported by anything in physics or geology. Nor is there any evidence that such HUGE water filled caverns ever existed.

So it is not out of the question, that the earth has had one as well in the past.

Really? What is supporting the heavier than water rock over the lighter that rock water? It is impossible.>>

And there is absolutely none of the evidence that would be there if this happened. AND it all happened buy Biblically valid dates that YOU posted after the Egyptians and Sumerians started writing. Somehow they failed to notice being wiped out and replaced hundreds of years later by entirely different people with entirely different languages.

Yellowdart, no matter how much crap you pile up, no matter how much you strain reality, no matter how hard you wave your arms, there is simply no evidence supporting it. And it is violates known WRITTEN history. Heck the Biblically based date you used is the oldest I have seen and it still AFTER the time that the Sumerians AND the Egyptians, and maybe even the Chinese, started writing.

But they both quilify... ITs just not possible for a global flood to begin and dissapear in 40 days with no physical or written signs that it ever happened. A large local flood on the other hand thats possible... but then theres the problem of getting EVERY animal in 2 pairs AND their food. What on earth happened to all the sea creatures. plant, sea plants, bacteria, invertebates (spelling) etc...

@CHollman82- OK. I should have called this Kraken conjecture "a far-fetched and unproven theory" rather than "science fiction". Unless some fossils of a Kraken are found, this will be as mythical as Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster. A Kraken would have surely had some hard parts, such as the beak and claws, and even soft body parts can fossilize under some conditions. Broken Itchthyosaur bones don't prove that a Kraken killed them --- this could have numerous more-plausible explanations, such as cannibalistic Itchthyosaurs.